Representative Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) introduced a bill on Tuesday that would abolish the federal Department of Education. The bill, just one sentence long, reads “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”

“States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students,” he added.

The bill, co-sponsored by seven other GOP members of the House, outlines no specific plan for the department’s abolition, but came at a strange moment. On Tuesday, Betsy DeVos, a top GOP donor from Michigan, was confirmed as the department’s secretary by the Senate — with Vice President Mike Pence casting a tie-breaking vote.

Since 1989, DeVos and her family have given more than $20 million to Republican candidates, committees, PACs and super PACs, one analysis shows.

DeVos’s confirmation process was the most contentious yet of any of President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees, and hers was the only cabinet vote in history to come down to a 50-50 split.

“I appreciate the Senate’s diligence and am honored to serve as [U.S. Department of Education] Secretary,” DeVos tweeted after the vote. “Let’s improve options and outcomes for all U.S. students.”

‘End Federal Meddling in Our Schools’

Massie and his co-sponsors are not the first to call for an end to the Education Department. During his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan recommended that the department — then about a year old — be abolished, but by the beginning of his second term, he abandoned the plan because of heated resistance from Congress.

Other Republican leaders, including Trump, have spearheaded campaigns and pushed platforms which angled on eliminating or slashing funding to the Education Department. During his unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign, Former Texas governor and current Energy Secretary Rick Perry also said he’d eliminate the Education Department.

Perhaps the most coordinated of such pushes was packaged in the 1996 Republican party platform. “Our formula is as simple as it is sweeping: the federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the workplace,” the platform read. “That is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools, and promote family choice at all levels of learning.”

Given how difficult it would be to dissolve the Education Department (let alone to eliminate the jobs of its more-than-4,000 employees), introducing the bill might be more of a way for Massie, first elected in 2012, to make a clear statement of his ideological leanings than have a substantive impact on policy.

Legal scholars say that, because the department was created through the Department of Education Organization Act and passed by Congress, the only way to repeal it would be through doing so with a replacement act, rather than by executive order, for instance.

“It would of course require another Act of Congress to eliminate the United States Department of Education,” Laurence Tribe, Harvard legal scholar, told Business Insider.

Any attempts to kill the Education Department by a Republican-controlled Congress will likely encounter serious pushback from Democrats, who also fought hard against DeVos’s confirmation.

Still, the new secretary is likely to make major changes, given that she is a staunch supporter of charter schools and school choice vouchers. The president’s education platform had pushed for a $20 billion voucher program for low-income families, which would allow parents to use taxpayer money for tuition and fees at private, parochial, or for-profit schools.

It’s not exactly known where that money would come from — Trump’s plan only urges a “reprioritizing of existing federal dollars” — but experts suggest that DeVos, who has no experience with the public school system or in higher education, could cut the department’s Office of Civil Rights or overturn Obama-era policy on college sexual assault.

11 comments

Best start homeschooling now or your children might not know how to read, they might not know true accurate science, etc. Very scary time for educated people who also want their children to have a decent public school education.

truck driver

WARNINGFAKENEWS

They should end it. I attended school until the 9th grade and dropped out because it was so uncool. Now, I collect welfare and am food stamps to boot, so things are alright with me. No education? No problem.

WarningFakeNews

Troll pretending. Although, the post was likely true of THEM. What’s funny about all of this Is that you’re really nobody doing anything useful unless you have your very own troll. It’s a badge of honor.

Givemeabreak

“When the states where running the schools everything was fine”. Things are just not that simple. Our culture has changed along with needing both parents working. Most parents use the computer or TV to raise their child now. It would be great if our problems were solved with just try plan B if plan A didn’t work. It is much more convoluted than that. Also why is the state government any better? I don’t think the Federal Government is the only government that has the market cornered on incompetence.

Givemeabreak

I agree with your statement that even the most basic math seems to be difficult for some. This isn’t necessarily all the school systems fault either, although they are not without blame. I was never allowed to use a calculator in school, period. Now it seems all the schools allow it. I also agree no child Left behind is garbage. If you couldn’t keep up in my day then you would have to either work harder or take remedial classes to catch up. Step up to the challenge.
Another big part of the dumbing down of our children is our own fault. We can blame the schools but as parents we need to take responsibility for not spending the proper time with our children. My Grandmother would sit with me and go over a problem, over and over till I got it.
The other problem I see is technology has made us all dumb. The phones have calculators right in them and remember the day you could remember 50 telephone numbers off the top of your head? I don’t even know my wife’s now. The brain needs constant challenges otherwise it just goes to mush. The internet is a great tool if you are not sitting there all day watching stupid videos. We have become a society of people that depend way too much on technology and prize money, and looks over knowledge. Our culture of consumerism is attributing to our brain rot. Americans now spend on average over 10 hours a day in front of screens and I would almost guarantee that most of that time is not constructive.
It is easy just to blame the school system but we are as much at fault as them, if not more, for not taking individual responsibility.

Givemeabreak

goose

Dislikes? I want REAL debate on this subject because this is where real people are losing most of their wages to nothing because they were driven enough to be prosperous. Debate me. Debate others. Resolve your argument through your own intelligence instead of using mass ignorance.